The magazine of the art-form of the photo-essay
Apr 2016 back issue
by Bruce Jackson
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
As recently as the 1970s, many inmates in southern prisons lived and
worked on prison farms that were not only modeled after the American
slave plantation, but even occupied lands that literally were slave
plantations before the Civil War, and on which working and living
conditions had not changed much a century after the war. Bruce Jackson
began visiting some of these prison farms in the 1960s to study black
convict worksongs and folk culture. He took a camera along as means of
visual note taking, but soon realized that he had an extraordinary
opportunity to document a world whose harshness was so extreme that at
least one prison had been declared unconstitutional. Allowed
unsupervised access to prison farms in Texas and Arkansas, Jackson
created an astonishing photographic record, most of which has never
before been published in book form.
Field major at back sallyport gate. Ellis prison farm. Texas, 1978.
Convict guards, Cummins prison farm, Arkansas, 1971.
Trusty who operated the cotton scale, Cummins prison farm, Arkansas, 1973. sas, 1973.
Convicts on carts, going to the fields. Cummins prison farm, Arkansas, 1975.
Cutting down liveoaks. Ellis prison farm, Texas, 1966.
Spade squads, Cummins prison farm, Arkansas, 1973.
Squads picking cotton. Ramsey prison farm, Texas, 1965.
Cotton squad carrying empty sacks, on the way to the cotton field. Ellis prison farm, Texas, 1978.
A field lieutenant drinking coffee or tea from a glass while behind him convicts pick cotton. Cummins prison farm,
Arkansas, 1975.
Squads returning to carts. Arkansas, 1975.
Patdown. Arkansas, 1973.
Isolation Unit, Cummins prison farm, Arkansas, 1974.
Convict with harmonica and sliderule. Cummins prison farm, Arkansas, 1974.
Bars. Cummins prison farm, Arkansas, 1974.
Death Row, Ellis prison farm, Texas, 1979.
Death Row, Ellis prison farm, Texas, 1979.
